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Just to say that I won’t be blogging for a little while as I’m having to deal with some real life stuff at the moment. I hope it’ll all be resolved pretty soon and I can get back to my lovely blog, but I’m just going to have to play it by ear for the moment. Lots of love and a Merry Christmas from me.

Hello Twitettians, I hope you are all well! After reading this post, you might want to sanitise your hands as I have Tonsillitis and I’m coughing germs everywhere. Plus, it’s good hygiene to sanitise you hand regularly regardless of plague-infested bloggers. But enough about that, lets talk about music.

Today’s ‘Musical Tuesday’ post is about an artist who I discovered no too long ago and completely by accident. I heard a song and much to my mothers annoyance, for she had just told me to shut up, exclaimed rather loudly:

‘I’ve heard this before!’

Now, this statement is not factually incorrect nor is it particularly exciting but when I know a song, and can’t place it, I go almost insane. I ended up listening to the song about 10 times and started to slowly piece together some lyrics

‘Fade in to the left hand of a sleepy man. How’ d he fall asleep there’

If any of you readers are frequent gamers like me, you will know that this is an extract from a parody written by Toby Turner, or Tobuscus, about the Assassin’s Creed Revelations trailer. Those aren’t the real lyrics of course, but it did give me the location of where I’d heard the song before, said trailer. The artist in question is Woodkid, and I’m hear to talk to you about his two Album’s, Iron and Run Boy Run.

Iron is the first album by Woodkid, and contains tracks such as ‘Iron’ and ‘Wasteland’. The album failed to chart in the UK. However, it did chart in 110th place over in France, and the ‘Iron’ single climbing to 53rd. Woodkid, or Yoann Lemoine, is originally from France and is not only a artist himself, but also the director of the music video’s for many famous artists, such as Lana Del Rey, Katy Perry and Rihanna.

Run Boy Run is the excellent second EP from Woodkid and as an album charted at 31 in France As a single, however, charted 55th in France and 44th in the UK. It’s a fabulous record with a catchy beat and is guaranteed to be stuck in your head all day.

So that’s this weeks Musical Tuesday, I’ll catch you next week for some more awesome tunes! – Milly

The act of buying a book is like nothing else in the world. There’s the anticipation of getting home and reading it straight through in one delicious sitting, or perhaps spinning it out over a few days- you’d have to have a lot more patience than I do, though. There’s the wonderful smell, of paper, fresh ink and that “bookshop” aroma that’s a mixture of dust and something like forgotten words, and of course there’s the cover. Is it simple, pared down, minimalistic? Beautifully sketched or modern? The font reasonably sized or small, elaborate or plain letters?

That’s just when it’s new, of course. The real charm sets in when you’ve owned it for a few months, and it’s become pleasantly dog-eared from that first flurry of reading. Now, it’s an old friend, sitting comfortably on your shelf, waiting patiently for you to pick it up again. And when you do, you might find something you’ve forgotten inside its pages- a scribbled number, your own childish handwriting from years ago if it’s a very old book, perhaps the scent of that perfume you always used to wear, anything really.

You might not have bought it yourself. Maybe it’s a gift from a well loved friend, one of those rare gifts when you don’t pretend to like it for the sake of politeness. Those are the most precious books, the ones that are carefully selected after hours of perusing various shelves. A present that’s appreciated fervently and kept for years is a pleasant surprise and one that you’ll always remember.

Not all the memories can be happy, though. It might be that it’s one someone’s left at your house- an ex, an old acquaintance, someone you don’t speak to any more. If it’s a particularly good book, you might feel a little smug that they’ve unwittingly given it to you, and resolve not to give it back too soon….

But then there’s the shiny new Kindle, perfect for slipping inside a bag, useful for long journeys. It can carry hundreds of books and still stay the same weight, the screen doesn’t emit light so it’s easy on tired eyes, and you can download books with the click of a button, which are a lot cheaper than a physical copy. I own a Kindle myself, and I have to say it’s very, very good. A boy I knew once barely read until he got one, and then started carrying it around school with him, which really made me smile.

It’s a perfect product, really. I know that my generation use electronics for practically everything better than anyone- this blog wouldn’t have happened without the social networking site twitter. And what better way to get teenagers who wouldn’t normally read to do so than to market a new gadget to them? It’s a real brainwave. Although I love books, Kindles are convenient, useful and reasonably affordable. They’re also fantastic Christmas presents, as parents won’t feel guilty about spending £69 on them- it’s educational, right?

There’s a heated debate about Kindles versus books, however. Some people (mostly older people, I’ve noticed) argue that nothing can replace a good book. Others prefer kindles vastly, mostly because of their convenience. But most people seem to use both. From a few dinner table chats with various people, I’ve found that they all seem to have roughly the same conclusion: yes, books will never be replaced, but kindles are incredibly useful.

I’m one of those people. I’ve always been an avid reader since managing the first paragraph of “famous five” by myself, and it was a real problem when I tried to take about ten heavy books in my hand luggage at the age of 6. Although I explained clearly to my parents that it was essential that I had all of them, they didn’t seem so keen on the idea- probably because they’d end up carrying the rucksack. I envy the 7 year olds of today, who can take twenty books AND five teddies AND that all important 500 page drawing pad AND the crayola set without (too) much trouble. My, kids these days!

You might be thinking- well, what’s the problem? There’s a balance of people using both, everything’ll be fine. Books will stay.

The thing is, the book industry is drowning in a big e-book shaped flood. Amazon takes a huge cut of the profits which used to go to the publisher and the retailer- as a result, big chains like Borders have vanished from our high streets, which I sorely miss. How can anyone save the huge corporate companies make a living? There’s no money in the publishing business any more, and I have an ominous feeling that Waterstone’s might be struggling. Yes, e-books are wonderful, but the satisfaction of leaving a bookshop with a heavy bag of reading material?

Irreplaceable.

Got something to say about this debate? Comment! Or contact me on twitter @viviantwitette

I, as the queen of procrastination, have not written on here in ages. In fact, I haven’t written in ages. I have completely given up with Nanowrimo and haven’t done any sort of creative writing for well over a week now. I’ve been to preoccupied with something else…

MUSIC.

So, I hereby present to you the new blog-series ‘Musical Tuesday’ in which I will be sharing my new found Artists and Albums, and what I think is hot, and well… not.

So, seeing as it’s Tuesday today, I thought I better get this show on the road!

~*-*~

My most played track this week is something that Holly sent me. It’s by a group called Passion Pit, from their 2012 album ‘Gossamer,’ which looks like this:

The track in question is called ‘Take a Walk’ and the lyrics describe a man who is struggling to motivate himself whilst drowning in a number of hardships. It is truly motivational song and is extremely catchy, I know this after humming it all through a physics exam.

Passion Pit are a five piece electropop group from Massachusetts formed in 2007. Gossamer is their second album, released July this year. It peaked at 56 in the Album Chart here in the UK, however it did much better across the pond in America, reaching fourth in the Billboard 200.

I discovered Passion Pit after they did a remix of a song by one of my all time favourite bands Imagine Dragons, who recently visited a city close to me on their tour, which unfortunately I was unable to attend. Since then, I have listened to them lots, my favourite tracks being ‘Take a Walk’, ‘The Reeling’ and ‘Sleepyhead’. I strongly recommend giving Passion Pit a listen, you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

You may be wondering about the considerable dearth of posts this month- we’re very sorry for our absence. However, three of us are writing NaNoWriMo at the moment, and we’re all snowed down with school work, which is rubbish. We’ll do our very best to put a few posts up this month, but it may be late November/early December before everything is back to normal. We promise to do lots of fun posts then though! You may deprive us of internet connection until we do (just kidding, without internet I’m fairly sure I would become an axe-murderer. )

So, I’m an avid fan of culture and recently went to see a lot of culturally related stuff, which was great. In the summer I went to York Mystery Plays 2012 (apparently David Tennant went the night before we did- damn!), and today I saw the Youth Theatre production of Northern Lights (York Theatre Royal) which I got free tickets for! Last weekend I went to Wakefield Art Gallery to see the Barbara Hepworth stuff amongst other things, next weekend I’m off to Leeds. It’s been great, I found out about a lot of upcoming stuff from the leaflets in Waterstones when I stopped to get some books (“A Clockwork Orange” and “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath)

I have a firm belief in the fact that you should see everything, whether it turns out to be good or bad. I find it extremely important to make your own judgments on pieces of work, and I love analyzing plays/films/books after I’ve seen them. For instance, my mother and myself had a massive discussion on the Youth Theatre production today which was fantastic. I’m a huge, huge fan of the His Dark Materials series, both the books and the film, and was eager to see how the adaption turned out.

Although I felt that the script was often wandering and clunky (my mother couldn’t follow it even though she’d seen the film), I thought the girl playing Lyra was brilliant. It’s a very difficult role to play without becoming unpleasant or overly precocious, and she wasn’t at all “actressy” which I was very pleased about. This girl has a long way to go. The boy playing Will was reasonably good for a young production too, both him and the actress playing Lyra shone throughout the play. However, the rest of the performance wasn’t exactly riveting.

The young man playing Lord Asriel really irritated me. He reminded me of the actor who played God and Jesus in the Mystery plays, all those little self-knowing turns and hand gestures which desperately scream “I’m an actor!” Every time I see this (which I call “actor-itis”) I snarl slightly. Has anyone else experienced this? It puts me off anything the minute I see it. Acting isn’t meant to be consciously done, it’s purely BECOMING that character. Lord Asriel is powerful, majestic and reflective, not some overenthusiastic guy swirling a coat around in excitement.

The other character that I found not quite up to scratch was Mrs Coulter. She had a very upper class accent which didn’t suit the role at all, and there was something just off about her portrayal. She never felt quite threatening, neither did she have that allure, that coy sensuality that attracts people to her like a moth to a flame. Hmmm.

I would recommend everyone going to the Hepworth art gallery in Wakefield. The Barbara Hepworth works were just wonderful, and they also showed brilliant in depth films documenting the process of making her works. The exhibitions on post-war art were striking too, and there was a gorgeous piece called “Sunrise” which was beautiful (unfortunately I can’t recall the name of the artist.)

Hope you enjoyed my culture roundup- I’ll do some more when I visit Leeds.

Hey, Boosh fans! Today’s your lucky day…no, you’re not getting a visit from Noel Fielding, don’t be stupid, you’re getting a book review instead. I am a massive fan of TMB so I was literally bouncing off the walls when I got given the Mighty Book of Boosh for a present. It’s a really fantastic book, full of the wonderful weirdness that is the Boosh. It has some stunning illustrations (or Noel’s devil scratchings, according to Rich Fulcher) along with some simply classic comedy moments- watch out for “Howard Moon’s Advanced School of Acting Expression” which is fantastic. I also loved the $512 sticker in the front, little things like that make a great book. For anyone who hasn’t yet got the book, here are some of my favourite moments. (Although I took these pictures, of course I don’t any of the book’s rights yadda yadda yadda)

Hope all the Australian Fieldmice are having fun! I live in England so I can’t be in on all the action (oo-er) but hopefully we’ll get a signing for Luxury Comedy Series 2…? Let’s hope so. And also some Boosh action? Come on boys, the time is right!